EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
277 
The inspectors of markets, valuable as are their services, can 
never entirely prevent the sale of even visibly bad meat; and 
in many of the cases to which we have reference 
perfectly powerless, simply because the evidence afforded by 
the carcass is not sufficient to prove that the animal was 
slaughtered in consequence of illness. Many a disease of 
brain, lung, heart, liver, stomach, intestines, and other organs, 
although dangerous to life, leaves no trace of its existence in 
the flesh, from which alone too many of these men judge. 
Doubtless an inspector, possessing a veterinary medical educa¬ 
tion—and such only should be appointed to the office—would 
be enabled to detect the footprints of the destroyer, where 
other persons, perhaps, gave welcome to the approach of a 
supposed friend. 
Our object, however, is not now to call attention to the 
inspectorship of markets, with a view to its improvement, 
but to allude to the difficulties that stand in the way of a 
supply of patients to a central cattle infirmary. This diffi¬ 
culty, we have said, does not belong to England alone, but 
is common also to the Continental schools, and hence vary¬ 
ing expedients, some of which cannot be adopted here, have 
been had recourse to for its removal. These schools are 
all under government management, and centralization can 
often give that which divided power has no means of be¬ 
stowing. But for this cause, not only would the hospitals 
belonging to many of these schools lack bovine patients, 
but equine also, for the supply of the latter often comes 
almost entirely from the army. To meet to some extent 
the necessity of the case, the authorities of the Brussels 
school long since endeavoured to teach one important divi¬ 
sion of cattle pathology, namely, parturition, by models of 
life-size, formed on such plan as to allow of the represen¬ 
tative foetus being placed in varying positions akin to those 
occurring in actual practice. This, no doubt, is useful in its 
way, and might be advantageously imitated by us, but 
something far beyond it is required to make veterinary 
pupils cattle practitioners. 
"While we write, an important discussion is taking p’ace 
between the Royal Veterinary College and the Royal Agri- 
